Conjunctive Forces
by Lys ap Adin
Summary: Yamato is getting at something, and Yukimura is humoring him until he figures out what it might be. Gen.


**Title:** Conjunctive Forces**  
Characters:** Yukimura Seiichi, Yamato Yuudai**  
Summary:** Yamato is getting at something, and Yukimura is humoring him until he figures out what it might be.**  
Notes:** For a friend on this, her birthday. Gen, spoilers by implication for chapter nine of the new manga. 1023 words.

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**Conjunctive Forces**

The sun was going down, and a couple hundred tennis-crazed teenagers were inside, crowding the cafeteria with their shouted laughter and boasts.

Seiichi was not with them. He had begged off dinner for lack of an appetite, and lingered on the tennis courts now, drumming a tennis ball against the ground idly.

"If you go on thinking that hard, you'll turn your hair white."

Seiichi caught the ball at the intrusion of the unfamiliar voice, looking up. Whichever of his purported senpai it was, he had his back to the sun. Seiichi couldn't see more than the dark circles of sunglasses and a smile that was less of a smirk than he'd expected, given the general quality of the high school students he'd met so far. "That's a risk I'm willing to take," he said, guardedly.

"I'm sure it will look very distinguished," his interlocutor assured him, and moved to sit on the bench next to Seiichi.

Seiichi recognized him, now that he wasn't backlit. "Yamato-san," he said, marginally more inclined to be polite, and studied him. "What brings you here?"

"Fresh air and clean living," Yamato-san said, smiling. "Same as the rest of us, you know."

"Of course." Seiichi couldn't help smiling, just a bit. He would have expected the man who'd helped shape Tezuka Kunimitsu to be more straight-laced, somehow. "What brings you to this particular bench at this particular moment in time?"

Yamato-san's eyes glinted behind his sunglasses--the man had a sense of humor. "Still the fresh air, I'm afraid. And the quiet. You?"

"It is rather noisy inside." That made for a useful enough excuse. It wasn't entirely untrue, either; he was in no mood to tolerate the ruckus of the older players at the moment.

"Quite," Yamato-san said, tone musing. "One needs to be in the proper frame of mind to face all those youthful spirits."

Seiichi eyed him. "Would you like to tell us damn kids to get off your lawn, ojiisan?"

Yamato-san laughed. "No, play there all you like. Just mind the azaleas."

It was very difficult to imagine Tezuka dealing with this person, Seiichi decided, looking at Yamato-san. Perhaps Tezuka's stern command presence had formed in reaction to his captain's puckish sense of humor. "I shall be sure to do so," he said, and stood. "If you'll--"

"I saw you play today," Yamato-san said, tilting his head back to look up at Seiichi. The angle and the sunglasses made it impossible to see his eyes, which Seiichi suspected was their point. "It was good to see you back in top form."

"Thank you," Seiichi said, rather more clipped than he would have liked. "I'm glad of it myself."

"Yes, of course. I had no doubt that you were." Yamato-san was still looking at him, but Seiichi had no idea what he might have been thinking, which was irritating. "Tennis is a peculiar sport, isn't it?"

"How so?" Seiichi asked, shifting on his feet, angling himself so that his back was to the setting sun. Fair was only fair, after all.

The quirking of Yamato-san's lips said he hadn't missed the significance of the move. "It's just an odd choice for a team sport, don't you think? Since it's not really played as a team."

So that was what this was about. He might have known.

Seiichi breathed out, carefully, and then shrugged. "I suppose not. But it is interesting to see several people working next to each other, all headed in the same direction, isn't it?"

"Oh, definitely." Yamato-san was still smiling. "Amazing what a motivated group can do, working in tandem. I've always thought so, anyway." He shrugged. "Still. It's a solitary sport, at the end of the day."

"Unless you happen to play doubles," Seiichi pointed out, just to be perverse, and to see how that would affect whatever homily Yamato-san was driving toward.

"Unless you play doubles," Yamato-san conceded. "But that isn't quite the same thing, is it?"

Seiichi didn't answer, and just waited, silently.

Eventually Yamato-san pressed on towards his point. "Are you still planning on going pro, Yukimura-kun?"

"Shouldn't I be?" Seiichi replied, using a mystified tone, though he thought he saw where Yamato-san was heading, now.

"I wondered. It takes people differently when they have to compete against friends."

Yes, he'd thought so. "The point is the game, Yamato-san," Seiichi told him. "The game and the opponent, whoever that may be. I don't play purely because I like winning, although that part is pleasant enough. I play because I love the game. That's what satisfies me."

Yamato-san looked up at him, inscrutable behind his sunglasses. Seiichi refused to let himself be drawn in by the same tactic he'd just used a moment ago, and stayed silent.

Finally, Yamato-san spoke again. "Not every game is for practice. And very few games end in draws."

"I wouldn't want them to," Seiichi told him, and smiled. "I'm not from Seigaku, you know. I'm from Rikkai Dai. We understand how to play tennis in conjunction with other things, I assure you." He paused, delicately, to let that sink in, and then added, "Perhaps this is a lecture you should save for your own kouhai."

Yamato-san looked up at him, eyebrows going up as the seconds ticked by, until he laughed, short and rueful. "I guess that's what I get for sticking my nose in where it wasn't invited."

"Just so," Seiichi murmured, but the fact that Yamato-san admitted to doing as much inclined him to be charitable. "It was kindly meant, at least." Kindness was in short supply among the high schoolers here; its rarity alone would have made it valuable.

"Generally so," Yamato-san agreed, smiling wryly. "I may have been concerned with retaining a future opponent, too."

Seiichi smiled, showing Yamato-san his teeth. "You needn't worry on that account," he said, and looked past him to where a set of figures in Rikkai's jerseys had emerged from the cafeteria and were making their way towards the tennis courts. "Good night, Yamato-san," he said, turning away.

"Until later," Yamato-san called after him.

Seiichi just smiled and went to meet his team.

**- end -**

Comments, as always, are lovely!


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